


Diplomatic Relations

by JackOfNone



Category: Exalted (game)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Wasuremono
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/pseuds/JackOfNone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to Z, who allowed me to pester him with last-minute canon questions, and a thousand apologies to the GM of my last Sidereals game for stealing his Abyssal name, even though he will probably never read this.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Diplomatic Relations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wasuremono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/gifts).



> Many thanks to Z, who allowed me to pester him with last-minute canon questions, and a thousand apologies to the GM of my last Sidereals game for stealing his Abyssal name, even though he will probably never read this.

Sesus Nagezzer was never sure if Spinda and Echo had originally been one person, or two, or something else entirely. The eerie sameness of their voices, the perfectly matched emeralds of their eyes...Nagezzer could not imagine why anyone had ever thought they were lying about their strange condition. However they had encountered it -- Sesus Nagezzer had never received a clear answer from the twins on the subject, and he suspected they did not remember -- they bore the unmistakable touch of the Wyld whenever they moved or spoke.

They regarded the visitor with an unreadable expression. Sesus Nagezzer had come to know the twins quite well in the past few months, and he knew that under other masters they had learned to hide their thoughts behind a mask of placid ignorance. Though they must know he trusted them implicitly -- they would not be here otherwise, when all of his other servants had been sent away -- they still kept to themselves until prompted for their opinions. Luckily, their opinions were mostly worth prompting for -- their previous owners had all been fools who had seen their admittedly exquisite bodies but utterly failed to perceive their clever mind, fractured though it may be.

The silk cushions rustled as Sesus Nagezzer leaned down towards the one on the right. "What do you think of our visitor?" he whispered. Spinda shook her head, and Echo said, in low tones, "he is dangerous."

"Of course," replied Sesus Nagezzer. "He has power. Power is dangerous, which is why I have always striven to avoid it."

"No," replied the girl. "I couldn't say if he is a powerful man or not. I meant that there are men across the Realm that would line up to slit your throat if they knew he so much as crossed your threshold."

"True patriots," Sesus Nagezzer said, his voice venomous.

The stranger bowed his head and kneeled. He was dressed all in white, and his face was veiled. The veil bore the emblem of a single red eye, and Nagezzer had the distinct impression that it was staring at him with a critical eye.

"You have come a long way," Sesus Nagezzer said. He extended a glass of fine fire-wine from the South -- an expensive indulgence -- but the visitor made no move to take it. Ah well, he thought. More to lavish on the twins later on.

"I have," said the stranger, with a voice that was as soft as a new snowdrift. Slowly, he lifted the linen veil and gazed up at Sesus Nagezzer with pale, colorless eyes and an ironic half-smile on his blue lips. Nagezzer the twins' breath catch in their throats...the man was beautiful, stunningly so, but cold like an exquisite statue carved from solid ice. Few people could look upon a face that beautiful and be unmoved.

Sesus Nagezzer, however, had long since grown bored with beautiful faces.

"What is your name, traveler?" he said, with a slight incline of his head. The man might have passed for a child of Mela, with his cloud-white hair and the light dusting of frost across his long eyelashes, but the black dagger at his side was a cruel, barbed thing cast from some unholy metal. Some few days ago, this beautiful creature had caught two of Nagezzer's spies in the North, and spared their lives on the condition that he speak to their master. Sesus Nagezzer, who knew an opportunity when he saw one, paid a great deal of money to have a sorcerer convey the strange man to their rendezvous point and back in secret, no questions asked.

"I have no name," the visitor replied. "I am called the Entertainer of Harrowing Proposals."

The man had quite a title. Sesus Nagezzer smiled at this. "And I am given to understand that, as your title might suggest, you have a proposal for me."

The man only smiled, and withdrew a worn battle standard from the voluminous sleeves of his robe. Sesus Nagezzer recognized the bloodstained emblem -- the flag of the Bull of the North.

"You know this," the man said. It was not a question. "And I know it. When I still breathed, I was a soldier of the Realm. I fell, and rose again in the shadow of the Bull's slaughter. And I am here to offer you a deal."

"A deal?" Sesus Nagezzer asked, arching one moss-green eyebrow. "And what is it that you bring to the table, oh Entertainer of Harrowing Proposals?"

"I can cut off the head of the Bull of the North," he said. A brief whisper the breeze, a sudden chill, and a sign appeared upon the forehead of the visitor...an Anathema's sign that split the perfect porcelain skin of his forehead and dripped scarlet blood down the sharp slope of his face. "I speak for the dead, Prince of the Earth, and they cry out for the Bull to be among them."

"And what will you have of me, speaker for the dead?" Sesus Nagezzer asked.

"A simple thing," he said. "The people of the North have begun to give the dead their due honor. If the legions of the Realm stationed there were to follow suit, I would not have them prevented from carrying out their rightful honors. And," here the man's eyes became cold, and his small, ironic smile returned, "I would lay claim to the dead who fell to the Bull's blade."

There was a soft rustle of silk as the twins shrank back in simultaneous alarm. He didn't blame them.

But when Anathema fought, it was a respite for the Realm.

"His tongue is poison," Echo murmured.

"I know," Sesus Nagezzer whispered back, allowing the slightest hint of a smirk to cross his lips. "But, Sextes Jylis willing, there's never been a poison I could not drink."

  



End file.
